ABSTRACT
Martin Heidegger was no friend of psychoanalysis. His first serious exposure to it came through the ministrations of Medard Boss, who, in effect, introduced him to Freud. Mediated through Boss’s own attempt to rethink Freud’s insights in what he called Daseinsanalysis, Heidegger’s relation to Freud himself remained cool, to say the least. Several attempts in the 1950s to entice him into dialogue with the so-called “French Freud,” Jacques Lacan, whose self-proclaimed “return to Freud” some found deeply consonant with certain themes of Heidegger, proved fruitless. Given this record, any new attempt to find philosophical relevance for psychoanalysis in the thought of Martin Heidegger seems ill-starred indeed. And yet . . .
